Contradictions of the Heart
by JeanieBeanie33
Summary: This is another one of those collections of drabbles that keeping popping up in this fandom. sorry folks. I'll try to make them good though! Pepperony, of course, but not necessarily to the 100 challenges.
1. Contradictions of the Heart

**Title: **Contradictions of the Heart

**Rating: **PG

**Sources of Inspiration**: _Intensity_ by Dean Koontz and 'The Call' by Regina Spektor from _The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian_

Virginia "Pepper" Potts knows that it is possible to love and hate something at the same time, like smoking cigarettes, but she never thought that state of mind would apply to _her_.

When Tony had first come home from his life-altering disappearance in a Middle Eastern mountain range, three months after Pepper Potts had come close to suffering a heart attack (Rhodey's voice, bringing the worst birthday gift of her life: _It's Tony, Pepper – there was an attack on his caravan, no survivors…but his body is missing)_, Pepper had at first loved that arc reactor. She'd missed Tony so bad, come to realize that he was all she had and possibly the only person she loved outside of her severely downsized family (cancer did that to a group of blood relatives), anything that had helped bring him back to her is something she'd forever treasure.

The blue-white glow cast by the reactor onto Tony's face is reassuring, because she knows the hum she feels when she places her hands on it is Tony's heart still resolutely beating, against the odds. Thanks to his own genius, of course, and she is grateful that he is the most brilliant person she knows.

Then she begins to hate it. She'd realized it one night, when she'd rushed into Tony's room after receiving an unauthorized call from Jarvis that Tony was undergoing the heart attack of all nightmares. He'd woken up the very moment she had placed a cold hand onto his sweltering face, grabbed her hand and had managed to realize who she was before he broke it. He'd apologized, in his own way (_I'm not accustomed to waking up looking at someone without a beard, Miss Potts – can we make this a routine?_), and, after she'd babbled an apology and an explanation as to why she was in his room (_The mother of all heart attacks? Hmm…well I can make someone feel like they're having one. Would you like to experience it for yourself?_)_,_ eventually drifted off to sleep with her cajoling and her pledge to stay there until he fell asleep at least.

She'd stayed there, like she'd promised she'd do. More than she promised, actually, since she ended up staying the night curled up next to his bed, her face propped upon an elbow digging into the mattress, right next to Tony's face. Before she herself had fallen asleep, she'd studied the arc reactor, and realized that she had been wrong. The arc reactor would not keep her Tony alive forever, would not keep him safe for her, because while Tony's heart couldn't function without the reactor, the reactor could function without Tony. It didn't help that she is sure Tony knew this too.

She hates it for more than that, however. The reactor had come to be a reminder of Tony's three-month-long nightmare, the circumstances in which it was made. Had Tony not been captured, he never would have needed to make one while simultaneously pretending to make a Jericho missile when he was secretly creating the Iron Man prototype. Pepper didn't think she'd ever forget the way she felt, or the way he looked (both appearance wise and how he looked at_ her_), when he walked down from that plane, one arm in a cast while the other waved away the stretcher. She knew for a fact she would never forget walking in on Tony, his face contorted into pain as he was subject to nightmares that were not nightmares at all, but memories.

At the same time though, she loves it. Even though one well-placed bullet could put it out of commission, and therefore Tony, it is a part of him. It is part of what made Tony Stark the Tony that maybe only she ever saw in him – not the playboy, not the reclusive genius, but the man who is willing to suit up and dive right into a conflict where bombs were exploding and bullets were being fired everywhere in order to not only save lives, but to not waste his own like he had so carelessly before. In short, it is very much indeed proof that Tony Stark has a heart.

She hates that arc reactor, the thing that lies to the entire world except Pepper and perhaps the man that houses it (like a host houses a parasite). But it is a part of Tony, and so she loves it.

© JeanieBeanie33


	2. The Little Things

**Title:** The Little Things

**Rating: **G

**Sources of Inspiration:** This time I can say it is 100 Iron Man that inspired this. Well, to be technical, it was a combination of Iron Man the movie and Iron Man fan fiction. Potato, po-tah-to.

**IMPORTANT AUTHOR'S NOTE: **To avoid confusion, let me point out that this is set BEFORE the movie. It wasn't originally supposed to be that way, but that's just how it turned out. Just clearing that up so no one stones me (literally – I once did get a stone thrown at me and let me tell you, I was five years old at the time but I will never forget how much it hurt).

The Little Things

When he finally decides to grace the world with his less-than-graceful presence, she is always there. Sometimes it will be to pick up the clothes from his latest one-night-stand to be sent to the cleaners, but always it is with a mug of black coffee and some aspirin to chase away the latest pains.

He never fully understands why, exactly, she hasn't quit. Neither does she. They aren't ready to comprehend that, that deep well of seemingly nothing that was really filled with everything: every look, every laugh, every conversation and argument they've ever had, every stretch of sometimes awkward, sometimes companionable silence they shared. All the emotions they'd felt, ranging from lust and lately a strange, persistent feeling that neither has really felt before.

He is always grateful that she is there, holds onto her like she's the only stable thing he has in his life – and really she is. Companies rise and fall at any time, Obadiah only talks to him once or twice a week and the ensuing discussions never last long unless it is about something big involving the company, and Jim Rhodes had his own life to live and job to do (a job that he loved, something Tony couldn't exactly claim). So that left her, his assistant for the past seven years, making her the one woman that had been able to resist him for longer than seven minutes (he knew this for a fact – he'd calculated it once).

Sometimes, watching her set his coffee down, the sunshine catching in her golden-red hair that made his heart do an odd flippy-floppy thing, he wishes that would change. And he used to wish that she would not be another notch in his bedpost, like all women before. Now he no longer wishes for that at all, but wonders: if such a thing were to happen, would it actually lead to a second night? And a third night? And an eighteen-thousandth-two-hundredth-and-sixty-second night? (That was fifty years, including the twelve leap years – could they last that long?)

But he never voices this question, not in all seriousness, because he's scared that he'll run her off, that she'll finally say "I quit" and walk away and actually mean it rather than a half-serious threat meant to get him to his latest meeting or demonstration or some other appointment. He never wants that to happen, to hear her heels click on the floor for the final time as she gathers her meager belongings and walks out the door, leaving forever.

So he keeps quiet and makes a snarky comment now and then about when she'll finally give in or about her latest outfit or her appearance, just for the heck of it. He gives her the access codes of his factory and home and his social security number, and power to sign his checks and any other forms requiring his signature. It takes a lot of trust, and he is sure he will never bestow the means to betray him like that to someone ever again, and there are so many ways that could go wrong if he had made a mistake in giving her that power. He gives permission (starting the very first year she worked for him) for her to buy a little something for herself with his money each time she celebrates her birthday (he only makes her do it, because he knows that he will forget, something that he hopes will not hurt her). He offered to pay her what some would call an outrageously large paycheck, because he knows he could never pay her what she's really worth, but she politely yet firmly declines and instead settles on what he believes is a much too small amount but is the only salary she'll accept (and he concedes it is way more than the average assistant is paid, even one that works for Stark Industries).

It's not much, those little things he does, but for the moment they are the only ways he is willing to show her that he does care, that she does matter to him, that he does want her to stay.

It's her birthday again, and of course he forgot, but luckily she bought herself something (he knows that he won't remember, so he won't ask what she bought so he won't feel guilty if she mentions it later and he doesn't have a clue). They're arguing over an appointment he was supposed to keep, about meeting Rhodey at his plane to go to Afghanistan. It was really more of banter than argument, though – that's what it had faded into over the years. That was the way she knew he liked it.

Neither knows it's the last time they'll see each other for much longer than a couple days. Neither knows this is the last time they will hear each other's voice for three months, or that they will imagine each other over and over again during Tony's very reluctant absence.

Perhaps it is best that way, because if his wavy of doing things had kept going like it had, he never would've been willing to take that step and dive into the vat of everything that had ever lay between them. He never would have made those little things into the something big that they had secretly wanted with each other for a too-long time.

He never would have had the guts to admit to her that she is his everything.

© JeanieBeanie33


	3. Playing Along

**Title**: Playing Along

**Rating: **K, or G

**Inspiration:** Reading an article about Geoffrey Rush's past work. He has a very impressive resume, especially in regards to theater.

**A/N: **Wow. I was amazed at the praise I received for this. I'm so glad that so many people enjoyed it immensely! As I write this, 418 hits in a day?? Thanks so, so very much!! Also, sorry if it's not as good as the previous two, but I posted this as soon as I finished it. Didn't want to leave you all hanging after leaving me such wonderful reviews.

And kudos to whoever spots the Heath Ledger reference.

"What's your favorite play?"

"…excuse me?"

"I said, what's your favorite play? You know, a littler version of a big screen movie with a stage and props and people running around in clown pajamas?"

"I still don't understand why you want to have this conversation now, Mr. Stark. I'm cleaning out your closet."

"Yes, and you're doing a wonderful job, Miss Potts, if I say so myself. You'll notice however that you just tossed out my old copy of _Romeo and Juliet_ and it made me think of plays. Back to my main point…."

"What?"

"_Peppper!_"

"You're whining, Mr. Stark."

"And you're avoiding the question."

"I am not. I am merely putting it off to a later time when I am not so busy hauling out all of _your_ junk."

"You love going through my junk. And Jarvis, wasn't Miss Potts avoiding my question?"

"_You are correct, sir. However, it is probably due to her trying to clean out your neglected closet filled with your childhood memoirs."_

"Thank you, Jarvis. Fine, Tony, if I were to choose, I'd say either Diary of a Mad Man or Twelfth Night."

"Geoffrey Rush a turn on for you then? Other than me, of course."

"No, sadly I have never seen his work. I also might say I like Romeo and Juliet. I played Nurse in high school."

"Nurse? _Nurse_? They should've cast you as a Juliet! You would've made an excellent Juliet."

"Oh really, Mr. Stark? And what makes you think that? I like to think I would've handled her situation a little more maturely."

"Simple: you're – "

"- quit staring at my ass. This box is very hard to lift and this skirt is custom fit, courtesy of _you_, Tony."

"– always waiting around for your beloved Romeo, or rather, your –"

"– Iron Man?"

"Why, if you insist, Miss Potts…Of course, you'd have to do without the suit, because then I couldn't do what Lover-Boy Romeo does best."

"Which is….?"

"Kiss you, of course."

"You're wrong – you have never kissed mmm…"

© JeanieBeanie33


	4. A Matter of Excellence, pt 1

**Title:** A Matter of Excellence, pt. 1

**Rating:** G for now

**Inspiration**: I guess _Juno_, simply because of the first line.

It started with a chair.

The great Tony Stark, millionaire, genius, prodigy, ex-playboy, Iron Man…was stumped. By a chair. Specifically, buying a chair to replace his old lab one, which was roughly fifteen years old (it had originally been bought by Howard Stark) and had finally fallen from Tony Stark's Level of Excellence For Everything He Owns.

Or rather, Tony Stark's Level of Excellence For Anything He Pays For, a list modified due to one very crucial factor of Tony's life: his personal assistant, Virgina "Pepper" Potts. Luckily for him, Pepper was at the very top of the list, and her position was only reinforced by her ability to assist him in any manner….except in _that_ way, much to Tony's disappointment.

Generally, Tony didn't care about what furniture was in his house. He hired an official coordinator for that sort of thing, with only one exception: his lab. Although having shown lackluster security measures in the past (that had been changed of course – Tony never would forget the feeling of being helpless and paralyzed, almost as piercing as Obadiah Stane's betrayal), Tony had never been so careless as to actually let someone see where he kept his designs, supplies, cars and now his Iron Man suit. Therefore, the room's design was his own, or rather Jarvis's, and the furniture was handpicked because it was the furniture that Tony would use the most, since the lab was the room he spent the most time in, and so it had to be comfortable and almost hand-made for Tony.

The part where Pepper came in was here, where, after Tony had finally searched multiple online furniture stores that usually stocked his home and his business, he had narrowed it down to the top twenty, then top then, then top five. And that was where he was stumped.

"Maybe I should just buy all five," Tony said while perched on the couch with Pepper's computer on his lap, his once perfectly coiffed hair standing on end from running his hands through it in frustration.

"Don't be ridiculous," said Pepper from over his shoulder, perfectly composed as always. "You have enough things in storage. It shouldn't be that hard, Tony – it's just a chair."

"No, no it's not!" Tony sputtered, half-turning in his "spinny chair" he was currently using ("The back's too stiff," he complained, when Pepper suggested using that chair to replace the decrepit one). He was talking fast, like he tended to do when he was under pressure. "It's not just a chair – it is _my_ chair, my lab chair. I will be sitting in when I get my creative juices flowing and while I'm creating and building and designing new toys and improvements for the suit and my cars and my company. In short, Pepper, it will witness history as I design the instruments of tomorrow. Do you know how important that is? I think _not_ or else you wouldn't say 'Tony, it's _just_ a _chair_!'" He spoke the last part in a falsetto and crossed his arms in an exaggerated pose, widening his eyes at Pepper.

Pepper couldn't help but smile slightly at the image of Tony slouched in his chair with his arms crossed like a little kid told he couldn't go to Chuck E. Cheese.

"I'm sorry, sir, I didn't realize the importance of the new chair to you," she said, trying hard not to laugh. "Shall we ask for Jarvis's opinion?"

Tony made a thoughtful face, then unexpectedly turned around so he and Pepper were now face-to-face…and dangerously close.

"Jarvis…you heard Miss Potts," he said, his dark gaze not faltering from Pepper's now wide blue eyes. And unlike all the times before, she wasn't pulling away yet….

There was a pause, then the dutiful AI answered, "I have a better idea, sir. Since all choices are in stores within the area, perhaps you should try them out yourself?"

"Hmm…sounds good," said Tony, still not looking away from Pepper. "Get a car ready. I'll take Stark 4."

Unfortunately, Pepper suddenly swallowed slightly and finally looked away.

"Will that be all, then, Mr. Stark?" she said quietly.

"Um, no," Tony said, as if it was obvious. "You're coming with me."

* * *

© JeanieBeanie33


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